The invention relates to the field of poultry watering devices and comprises a leak resistant watering cup which is easily actuated by poultry.
Modern poultry farms generally include large coops featuring numerous racks of in-line cages often containing thousands of chickens and utilizing automatic feeding and watering equipment. Typically each cage is provided with an individual watering cup which is connected with a central water system. Because of the large quantity of poultry, it is often difficult to supervise individual cages and to identify failing equipment until it is too late and valuable poultry have perished.
While a large variety of poultry watering devices have been introduced over the years, none of the existing products has wholly satisfied the need for elimination of water leakage but still allowed unrestricted operation of the device by the birds. These two goals have sometimes seemed mutually exclusive and achievement of both has proved extremely difficult. While the valves of individual chicken watering devices can be easily made leak-free by applying needed additional pressure to the valves to assure complete closure, such a solution has the unfortunate side effect of making the triggering mechanism of the device so stiff as to preclude some poultry from adequately actuating the device to inject additional water.
Poultry houses utilize different types of water delivery systems, some having simple gravity pressure for water flow, while others utilize relatively high municipal water pressure. As a further complicating factor, as the water is piped to large arrays of cages occupying multiple rows and racks and having water supply lines with multiple divisions and subdivisions, the final outlet pressure can vary substantially and often unpredictably from one area to another. This substantial range of varying pressures has complicated the task of designing a single chicken watering device which is usable over the substantial pressure ranges commonly encountered in poultry houses.
These pressure variations are generally incompatible with existing watering devices and those devices subject to pressures for which they were not designed leak badly. It is particularly important in poultry raising that dampness and leakage be eliminated from the cage area because they frequently lead to unsanitary and potentially disease inducing conditions in which the birds have a higher mortality rate.
Designing an effective watering device has also been complicated by the fact that the amount of pressure a chicken can apply to actuate a valve trigger is often suprisingly small because of the now common practice of de-beaking the chicken, a process which removes much of the beak to reduce fighting between chickens but makes the chicken's beak so tender as to reduce its ability to actuate even a moderately stiff valve trigger.
Many known watering devices depend solely on the inlet water pressure to achieve a closure of their valves. These structures are prone to substantial leaking when the pressure is lower than expected and their trigger valves become excessively stiff and resist opening by a bird when the water pressure is higher than expected.
Still other types of chicken watering devices are known which utilize a spring loaded valve which can generally successfully prevent leakage, but which because of the spring or design is often so stiff as to defy actuation by a de-beaked chicken. Various alternative triggering structures have been developed in the art which give the chicken additional leverage to permit actuation of the trigger while still maintaining a high spring force on the valve, but these are often expensive or so cumbersome as to be impractical. They also are more prone to failure when food and cage waste materials become lodged in and around the trigger mechanism and cause jamming and malfunction.
With the above problems and challenges, commercially available watering devices have prior to the present invention been unable to satisfy both the requirements of minimal leakage and the need to allow the poultry to actuate the device easily and consistently, with little failure. As will be appreciated by those skilled in the art, it is crucial that the chicken or other bird be able to rapidly master the triggering system of the watering device and be successful in obtaining water in almost every instance or the bird rapidly gives up working the device and thereafter dies of dehydration.
Among the better watering devices introduced in recent years is the device shown in U.S. Pat. No. 3,862,621, to William S. Peppler, in which a chicken watering cup utilizes an elongated trigger shaft having a valve disc which cooperates with a valve seat to control water flow into the watering cup. This device depends on ambient water pressure to keep it closed and is actuated by a bird wobbling the shaft to dislodge the valve disc from the valve seat. A variation of the Peppler device has been commercially available as part of the prior art and utilizes a coil spring to urge the shaft and valve disc against the valve seat. Prior to the present invention, however, the springs used were either too stiff for bird actuation or too weak to consistently prevent leakage. In the past, watering devices have had to be designed to allow most chickens to actuate them and manufacturers have simply had to accept the leakage that up to now appeared unavoidable. The Peppler device adopted a middle ground and installed a drain to remove the water leakage. While effective, such drains increase the cost of installation and can require additional, expensive plumbing.
The present invention is directed toward the solution of these problems and provides a watering device utilizing a triggering system similar to that of the Peppler device but which is provided with a spring system having a very narrow, carefully controlled range of spring biasing force which is perfectly suited to the requirement of minimal leakage while permitting free actuation by poultry.